Ukraine’s FEMEN activists get naked for salary

KIEV, September 21 (Itar-Tass) —— Activists from Ukraine’s FEMEN movement get naked for a salary of at least 1,000 U.S. dollars, Kiev’s 1 Plus 1 television channel said on Friday, referring to a woman journalist from the Groshi (Money) television program who infiltrated into that scandalous female movement.

To do that, the journalist had to be “interviewed,” i.e. to be photographed topless by a movement activist. That’s all. “I just want to make sure that you are ready to get naked. I don’t want to find out that you are not ripe for that when we are marching hand-in-hand during an action,” the movement’s leader, Alexandra Shevchenko explained. Later, she instructed the journalist what to do on camera. Shortly after, the journalist was commissioned for her first mission – to take part in an action in front of an Islamic centre in Paris. Per capita expenses, including plane tickets, hotel accommodations, taxi and meals, amounted to about 1,000 euro a day. Each girl was provided with a “revealing outfit.”

The journalist dug out that FEMEN pays about 20,000 hryvnas, or about 2,500 U.S. dollars, a month to rent an office in downtown Kiev and each of its activists receives a pay of at least 1,000 U.S. dollars. “The feminists’ naked breasts conceal someone’s money and political interests,” Groshi assumed.

Several days ago, FEMEN opened its office in Paris, where Alexandra Shevchenko fled after Ukraine’s police launched an investigation into an incident when the topless FEMEN activist chopped down a Christian cross in the centre of the Ukrainian capital Kiev with a power saw in protest against the prosecution of Russian feminist punk band Pussy Riot. “We are an international movement,” she was quoted as saying. “We are opening a base in France to bring together activists from around the globe – from Europe, Asia and America.” In Paris, she said, the activists will “drill the strategy and tactics.” Thus, the French capital is going to be both a “training camp” and a launching ground for new strip actions of the movement whose motto is “Nakedness, Struggle, Freedom.”